Borras leaves DHS more integrated, on better financial path

Listen to Jason Miller's interview with Rafael Borras.

The Homeland Security Department launched version one of the Management Cube
earlier this month.

For the first time in the agency's 11-year history, officials can understand the
interactions between data.

"Because it has been built in an integrated fashion, now you have the ability to
layer information," said Rafael Borras, the undersecretary for management at the
Homeland Security Department for the last four years, who recently left DHS to return to the private
sector, in an exclusive interview with Federal News Radio. "So for example, if DHS
is looking at a facility in Dallas, Texas, it's not that hard to know how many
people are assigned to that facility. But that's not enough. It doesn't tell me
anything about what's happening at that location. The system can now not only
query how many people are assigned to this location, [but by] looking at our
security data, we know how many people swipe in and swipe out. So now we also know
how well or not the facility is being utilized."

Borras said three or four years ago, DHS would only know how many people were
assigned to the facility and base their square-footage needs on that total number.

But the Management Cube opens the aperture across several different data layers.

"Now you start bringing this information together, and you see how many people are
using IT systems, so you have the IT data. The security data tells you how many
people are coming in and out. You look at the HR data and how many people are
assigned there, you might find — and I'm just making this number up as an
example — out of the 1,000 people, only 200 are coming in every day," he
said. "That allows you to begin to drive some real-estate decisions about how to
readjust or realign that footprint."

Vision from the beginning

This simple example highlights just how far DHS has come over Borras' four years
as undersecretary for management.

From the beginning, Borras said his goal was to make DHS more business-like in how
it uses data to make decisions. During his confirmation preparation before the
Senate, he said he wrote a management paper detailing focus areas, including
improving the agency's decision making capabilities.

"There was a time at DHS when, as you know we have 13 different financial systems,
it took sometimes 90 days plus just to do a data call within the various
components to get information back to help decision making, whether it was to
respond to Congress, respond to the Office of Management and Budget or respond to
the secretary," he said. "What we were trying to do is shorten that time."

Borras kicked off two complementary tracks to begin fixing the data and systems
problems.

One track created this Management Cube by bringing some standards to how the
agency constructs and maintains databases.

The second track focused on financial management and moving the department toward
a clean financial audit. DHS finally achieved a clean audit in
fiscal 2013 after a decade of not being able to close its financial books.

Borras credited the senior officials leading the financial, technology,
acquisition, human resources and program offices for accomplishing the clean audit
and management cube.

But it takes a vision and support from the top to push through the barriers and
keep the agency on track to meet its goals, and that's the role Borras played.

"I had this vision in mind, but it was all integrated. It was not just a data
analytics system, but a behavior system, if you will. I wanted to force the
integration of all six lines of businesses. So, they are all layered, all of these
strategies, and built upon each other," he said. "So, first was the very sort of
culture effort to be able to get the lines of businesses to find their
interdependencies and to work closer together and mutually. That made the decision
to build the cube on a single platform. That was much easier because we had
already begun to force that integration by bringing the chiefs closer together."

No new money for the Cube

Part of the reason the cube idea worked was as much about timing as Borras'
ability to force the integration.

He said everyone understood the common sense, practical nature of building a
platform that made data integration easier.

"We never asked Congress for more money to build a Management Cube. We've been
finding internal efficiencies. I think this is the real key, reprioritizing our
investments," Borras said. "So typically what you find in a lot of organizations,
if someone wants to do something new, the first thing you say is you go to OMB or
Congress and say 'I need some more money to do X.' Our approach was different. We
said, 'if X is that important, we will find things we don't want to do and
reallocate that money,' with OMB's knowledge and approval and the Hill being aware
of it as well. I think that gained us a lot of credibility with both OMB and the
Hill when they saw how committed we were to it that we were able to reprioritize
our spending and put it behind the development of these tools."